Sun in an Empty Room

The light of it made up the bulk of it if I recall, and, somehow, it was still day. Room vacated, barren, a reminder of what had not yet blossomed.

And if I remember it right, cloud shadow cloaked you in the shirt you said you hemmed from the sky, and for some reason, I believed you. We counted our scars beside our freckles and left the light for somewhere inside our heads.

At once, we knew we could never go home.

And if I truly remember, you resisted yet embraced the weight of it, despite it, the light not our friend but our cynic, an agent. It said, "the trees are watching," but before we could look, they stood still as stone.

Somehow it was still day, and somehow you covered us in its warm sheets. We matched bone for tired bone underneath, until the light said the scene was over.

Did the walls clutch the spark of it? House a budding doubt in the heart of it? You let your hair down and honey crept up my throat.

In all that clutching, you and everything you claimed became the light through the open window—you had no body, no memory, no way to answer.

I stumbled for years in that loft, Love, but your form promised that day would remain. So, in all that day, I suckled on the last of it: the sweet in my throat, your shirt made of sky, our scar tissue, what at once almost blossomed.

But when night finally came, I could only believe in you. And, if I remember it right, when day broke, you never did return.

I cannot use the painting that inspired this piece due to copyright, but I will include a link if you are interested in viewing: https://www.edwardhopper.net/sun-in-an-empty-room.jsp